Tony Scott loves HumVees. Tony Scott loves explosions. Tony Scott loves a
car chase. And the British born, high-octane film director loves a grand and
outrageous plot. It is evident in the director’s newest Denzil-driven
vehicle, DEJAVU, that Scott also loves science — physics to be exact and all
the titillating, time-traveling, mystery unraveling and life-journey
correcting possibilities hidden below the surface of Einstein’s most
pop-appropriated theories.

When ATF Agent Doug
Carlin (Denzil Washington) is brought in to investigate the explosion of a
Navy vessel in a New Orleans harbor on the eve of Mardi Gras, we expect the
usual plot of brilliant local officer waging a private battle against
bureaucracy as the Feds descend on a crime scene Agent Denzil, excuse me I
mean Carlin, has already figured out. Having seen Denzil as the principled
rogue-element in Tony Scott films before, most recently MAN ON FIRE and
before that the Cold-War thriller classic CRIMSON TIDE, we know this
determined and outlandishly-mannish Denzil. We know him and we love him.

But what Scott’s
direction and the complex screenplay written by the team of Marsilii and
Rossio infuse with new energy is Agent Carlin’s sense of curiosity. It is
infectious. Denzil’s ATF agent is an intellect tempered by a native New
Orleanian’s sense of fatalism. When after a long-night of investigative
work, one of the Federal suits played by a meaty but still gorgeous Val
Kilmner, suggests that Agent Carlin go home to whatever loved one he has
waiting, and Denzil replies that we all lose what we care about so why have
anything or anybody waiting, we know the agent has come by this truism the
hard way. Carlin’s city, a hurricane ravaged post-Katrina New Orleans which
Scott shows us in a few raw, rare shots, clearly shares Agent Carlin’s
sentiments.

Yet they also share the
inability to stand still and accept the narrative of the perpetually woeful.
Both New Orleans and Carlin’s stubborn will to continue to engage in life is
established in the idyllic sweep of Scott’s opening sequence as the over 500
doomed sailors and their families embark on that final Mardi Gras cruise.
Lurking behind the band music, smiles and drowsy babies in their mothers’
arms as they board, is the horror of the world we now live in. Terror is
near and painfully close to us always, Scott seems to say. But he is also
introducing the equally as necessary belief that after tragedy, life can and
does struggle up through the ashes. Agent Carlin’s phoenix comes to him in
the form of a dead woman connected to the explosion, who washes up on shore,
body burned, fingers amputated.

Claire Kuchever (Paula
Patton) is Carlin’s portal to another world. In shades of camera work
reminiscent of Tony’s older brother Ridley in BLADE RUNNER--we catch
glimpses of Claire through grainy photo imaging that become so real that
Carlin soon becomes love-sick. The life he could have had seems to rest in
the sublime beauty of a woman he’d never met and yet comes to know
intimately. That such glimpses into Claire’s past, or is it her future, are
granted to Agent Carlin by the very Federal bureaucrats we have been trained
throughout cinema history to distrust, provides an extra layer of intrigue
to performances by Kilmner, Bruce Greenwood, Erika Alexander and Adam
Goldberg. Such that when, Carlin is given entree to their inner sanctum we
are certain there is a catch. And there is.

It is in Agent Carlin’s
pursuit of love, the terrorist, and scientific/mystical clarity (Claire)
that the laws of physics enter in and the sci-fi fan’s love of the fantastic
and surreal move forward full throttle. Scott’s action sequences in DEJAVU
are an egg-head’s delight--best represented by a high-energy highway scene
that takes a cinematic triple-gainer into the possibilities of seeing into
the past, present and future all at once. Our recent national and
international experiences with the idea of the lone terrorist driven by some
demonic sense of patriotism or misguided, and therefore violent, religiosity
adds to the malevolence of James Caviezel’s portrayal of the murderous
Carroll Oerstadt. When he and Denzil meet, and meet again, the force of
Caviezel’s gaze is such that you’re not exactly sure who’s gonna win. This
is the mark of the true hero/crazed foe pairing. And it’s a bit disturbing
how sexy Cavieziel is, whether he’s wearing a crown of thorns as he does in
the controversial 2004 film THE PASSION OF CHRIST, or brandishing automatic
weaponry. Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer have amped up the dichotomy
of saviour-destroyer imagery here and delightlfully capitalized on the thin
line between the best of sci-fi, action-thriller fare and true romance.

tsqirrs,kFIVE
CHICKS with a suggestion to see Denzil in this complex sci-action flick as
many times as lovelorn Christopher Reeves fans were compelled to watch and
to weep through the 1980’s sci-romance, also with a mystical, pop-science
theme, SOMEWHERE IN TIME.